Sensing the frustration of my fellow study tourists in not getting to the core of what makes The Incredible Years work, I propose to its originator, Carolyn Webster-Stratton, the following: The Incredible Years improves the emotional and behavioral development of children by reducing coercive parenting. That’s 110 characters.

It’s not far off but it doesn’t quite cut it. It prompts Carolyn and her colleagues into a conversation about the other aspects of the model not mentioned: the value of groups, the developmental aspect, relationship…

So it’s about promoting positive parenting as well as dealing coercive parenting, and… before we know it, there are too many additions to write down and I’m losing the thread.

This is quite an interesting dilemma. Improving children’s health and development is complicated. No doubt about it. Evidence based program makers have analyzed miles of data in order to work out how it might be done and have gone to the further necessary trouble of testing their hypotheses.

But my guess is that the ideas are very simple at the outset. As time goes on, the program developer learns more, and potential customers ask for more. Adaptations and additions lead to to more questions and more answers, and, before you know it, a simple model has become extremely complicated – which is a problem for systems people and for philanthropists who want to invest in outcomes.

They want to know “the offer”. What does this program achieve? How does it do it? Why does it work? How much does it cost? What are the benefits? Tweet me!